Blood Music Sex Magick
Austin Convention Center, Friday, March 16“Satan and rock & roll” doesn’t quite have the same poetic ring to it as the well-worn triumvirate of “sex, drugs, and rock & roll.” But when you consider that, according to contemporary Judeo-Christian mores, fornication and chemical engineering fall under the domain of the Dark Lord, then maybe the more parsimonious phrasing is just as apt. If only the Blood Music Sex Magick panelists would have erred on the side of less as well – specifically, less serious. Asking magician Josh Sharp to open with a monologue on Gauguin, Aleister Crowley, and other figures with dark histories was a serious fucking bummer. Nobody believes this shit. OK, Jimmy Page, Robert Johnson, blah blah blah. Sure, it scares parents and that sells albums, but treating this as more than a meta-joke perpetrated on those lacking a sense of humor only gives ammunition to those very people. Paraphrasing the creed of panelist Andrew Wilkes-Krier, aka Andrew W.K., “party, party, party, party, party, etc.” is really the ends we’re after. Pretending to suck up to Satan is just a carnival ride side trip of the means there.
This article appears in March 16 • 2012.